NYPD can't find knife at center of Brooklyn subway bystander shooting

Man, even the article can't get the story straight...
"NYPD can't find knife"...
"the department put out a request seeking the public's help to find the knife"...
"a man believed to have swiped the suspect's knife"...
"Video circulating on social media appears to show the man scoop up the knife"...
OK, that's all consistent...
"the NYPD posted on X that the knife had been "recovered" following the police shooting."
Um, no.
"Below is a picture of the weapon recovered from the scene of today’s incident. pic.twitter.com/D3AZjNr4cL
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) September 15, 2024"
Recovered? But then...
"Now, they are seeking the individual potentially in possession of the weapon"... Did you or did you not recover the weapon?
"the now-missing knife"... OK, so NOT recovered.
- The current position of the NYPD is that some random black guy wandering past a crime scene after the cops shot up a crowd decided to steal the knife that the cops considered to be key evidence. This is, to put it mildly, somewhat less credible than the claim that a crow tried to steal a murder weapon.
  
  Honestly I find Russian general's belief in a 3 day offensive more credible than that.
  Nearly 1000 days later, even.
  
  "Hey, free knife"
  
  Of course they say the guy was black. 🙄
- “the department put out a request seeking the public’s help to find the knife”
  Translation: "We'd love someone to come forward with a knife and claim it's from the crime scene, so we can cover our asses."
- The police have not been a credible source of information since the BLM protests. I'm sure they lied all the time before that too but that period really put a light on how much they lie. It's their first instinct in any situation, just deny anything wrong happened and cast aspersions on the victim's character.
  
  Police unions are terrorist orgs
  
  Police have never really been a source of credible information. We just have the tools and technology to reveal when they are lying now.
- Purposely creating confusion
- By "recovered" the cops unironically mean the opposite of recovered - as in a non-police person has taken the knife.
  I can't tell from just this article if I should lean more to standard cop butchering of language or intentional deception.
  EDIT: Or not? I found another article that says they retracted that statement about recovering the knife - that it was the wrong knife. That definitely doesn't make me less suspicious...
  
  "Oh, no, not THAT knife, it's a different knife... from Canada... you don't know it..."
- Shouldn't the knive have a shadow?

Distraction from what actually happened here... They panicked, escalated a nonviolent situation and shot an innocent bystander in the head. That man was your father, your brother, your husband, your son. Riding the subway and then shot in the head.
These stories will get closer and closer to you. They will impact acquaintances and then friends of friends and the then, one day, you'll get the worst phone call of your life...
- Distraction from what actually happened here…
  The initial "he had a knife!" was a distraction, certainly. But now it brings us back to the meat of the matter - the NYPD lies on impulse about everything in order to cover their asses.
  At this point, who even fucking knows if he actually jumped a turnstile or if the police just decided to chase after and harass a guy who'd legally paid his fare?
  These stories will get closer and closer to you.
  I've got family in Manhattan and Queens. Fucking horrifying to think one of them might have been caught in the middle of this. Unfortunately, my NY family cannot stop having a hard-on for the cops. Given the deluge of far-right media around the incident and the degree to which the lies of the police are embellished and added on to by even less reputable talk radio goons and social media crackpots, I doubt this will change their view of what happened.
  A demon-man used his magic knife to force two police officers to shot into a crowd, and only the brave champions of law and order were able to stop him.
  
  Not just NYPD. ACAB
- Only if you're American.
  
  You're very right - There are famously ZERO tourists from other countries in New York City that could be struck by these stray bullets from these cowardly police officers.
  Congratulations on contributing to this conversation. We were all waiting on you to speak up and you just really delivered for us all.
  
  Not really. Six Indigenous people were killed by Canadian cops in 15 days. Source
  "If the proportion of Indigenous people killed by police was put into the terms of the general population, it would equal 127 Canadians killed by police in two weeks." Brandi Morin

They saw the concept of a knife
- Dude, if their shit is so cut-and-dry (which as we can tel by the wording on their press releases and their public quotes: he “muttered” a threat, they “became aware” he had a knife, that it’s clearly not), why wouldn’t they just release the footage?
  Their story is clearly bullshit. Nothing happened that would justify this situation. They escalated unnecessarily, created a life threatening situation over $2.90, and nearly killed a bunch of people.
  Let’s see the fuckin tape, you goddamn maniac cowards. We all know you’re spinning the yarn. Fire these fucking dangerous dog shits immediately.

A little background on the NYPD and firearms
Back when most departments were transitioning from revolvers to semi-auto, NYPD held on to revolvers for quite a while. Their revolvers used double action triggers, which means pulling the trigger both rotates the cylinder and also cocks the hammer. This means the trigger pull is long and heavy, you have to pull it a long distance back and with a good amount of force.
With pistols, the longer distance you have to pull the trigger and the harder you have to pull, the less accurate you are. Pulling the trigger moves your hand and puts force on the gun itself which can throw off your aim.
Many officers would 'pre stage' the trigger, pulling it halfway back to an indent where the pull gets slightly harder. This is a horrible practice that no one should ever do, because it means you might unintentionally discharge if you get jostled, but it made them more accurate when it came time to actually fire so they kept doing it. NYPD didn't train it out of the officers even though it is against virtually every firearm guideline.
So then the department switched from revolvers to semi-auto pistols, mainly for the magazine- average semi-auto pistol holds 17 rounds, revolver holds 6. But they used striker fired pistols- these guns have a shorter, lighter trigger pull as the only thing the trigger does is move a catch to release already stored spring tension into the firing pin. That can make you much more accurate because the force of pulling the trigger moves your aim off, so less force needed to pull the trigger means more accuracy.
Problem was, a lot of officers had muscle memory from years or decades of carrying the double action revolver so they would try to pre-stage the trigger. And that would of course fire the gun when they didn't want to.
NYPD's solution to this was to simply make the trigger on their semi-autos really really really hard to pull. They had a custom spring designed that increased the trigger force- a semi-auto usually requires about 4-6 pounds of force to pull the trigger, they put a 12 lb spring. That allowed the officers to apply pre-stage force from their revolver days without discharging the weapon. Still absolutely horrible practice, but this stopped the unintentional discharges.
This had the side effect of course of making the guns relatively inaccurate. When you have to squeeze the trigger with that much force, it throws your aim off. And especially when you are in an emergency situation and adrenaline is pumping, it's hard to shoot accurately when you need to pull that hard. But it stopped the unintentional discharges so they went with it, since the force had a lot of old-timers.
And, for a very long time, they kept issuing these 12lb trigger guns even to new recruits, many of whom had never fired a gun before and could be easily trained to use a standard trigger with proper trigger discipline. So now THOSE officers were accustomed to 12lb triggers.
For the record, no other police department in the nation did this. Every one of them transitioned from revolvers to semi-autos without much problem, because they did not tolerate bad trigger discipline to begin with. And while some recommend a slightly stiffer trigger than the stock trigger, NYPD is literally the only one with a 12 lb trigger.
It wasn't until 2021 that NYPD started to back off, and started issuing new recruits weapons with 'only' 8lb trigger springs. That is still fairly high, but those 4 lb less makes it a lot easier to shoot accurately.
Point of all this-- When I hear that NYPD is shooting multiple bystanders, I'm not surprised. Unless those officers first hit the streets in the last couple of years, they are still using the 12 lb trigger and it's not surprising they have shit accuracy and are shooting bystanders.
It's a problem of NYPD's own making though.
- That was really interesting and informative. Thank you that comment.
  
  Most welcome!
- Not to mention that 8lbs is still considered a horrendously high trigger pull. Glocks (what the NYPD carries) are already known for having kind of mediocre triggers, just due to the nature of their design. It's literally heavier than even the double-action triggers on any of my guns, one of which is literally an old Italian police Beretta. At least then only the first shot is more difficult to fire

Hey now, don't worry. I'm sure this will all be cleared up when the bodycam footage is released and it clearly shows the police being menaced with a knife... right?
- Does the MTA not have security cameras? I live in Boston where the system is an antique (literally, in one part) and we have cameras on all platforms and all new trains.
  (Granted, we did also face that bombing a few years ago that probably was used to justify the funding for it.)
  
  They do and have publicly stated as much.

Knife, belt buckle, light reflecting off a window - who can say what they really saw? All I know is they won't serve any prison time and that's fucked up.
- They “became aware of a knife in his pocket”. That’s why there was no light reflecting

I know I have definitely been waiting for the inevitable video from someone there that disproves anything the cops said.
And I kinda hate having that feeling, to be honest. We shouldn’t feel that way.
But as we’ve seen time and again, cops’ word often can’t be taken as proof without some video to back it up.
- The sheer, unmitigated corruption and violence that comes from police departments and courts (especially looking at you, "Supreme" Court) is utterly disheartening. I sincerely do not see a way forward without violence, and I am not a proponent of violence. But things have gotten so bad, the people have so few protections and so few people in power on their side. What are you supposed to do when voting doesn't matter because of corruption, gerrymandering, voter intimidation, disenfranchisement?
  Where do we go from here when there is no one with power or in the mainstream political sphere who is even trying to correct it?
  Yes, we have Bernie and AOC, but two people can't do a thing.

"Please help exonerate us! We totally had the right to shoot someone because they didn't pay $3.50!"
- Unless the figure has been changed, it was even less than that.
- $2.90.

Why hasn't the mayor released the full body cam footage yet? If they are going to release statements but withhold material evidence we should assume they are doing it to manipulate public opinion against the facts.
- He's a little busy right now
  And he's also a cop, so guess which side he would be on

are they just training them now to shout something about their life being in danger before they pull the trigger?
like south parks "theyre coming right for us!"
- This has been sop for a few decades now.
  
  Yeah, the South Park episode was based on a true story.
- No no, just feeling like they're in danger is fine now.
  If you yell something, you might spook the person you're intending to shoot who is, for example, simply holding their wallet.
  
  If they have a concept of danger, it’s enough to blast away
  
  Diallo.
- I'm guessing you haven't heard of Killology. They are literally trained to see the populace as dangerous enemy combatants, and they have fewer rules of engagement than soldiers do abroad. So they shoot whoever and whatever the fuck they want, and get away with it.
- Training is short so they make sure to make it count, they don't see what they're doing as a profession necessitating years of training like other professions unfortunately.

Yikes.

The funny thing is you know they have searched every subway station in the area and can’t find a single knife

I was gonna make a joke about Chris Rock's video guide with this exact scenario, but nah this actually exceeds that skit because:
The guy was apparently unarmed, meaning he actually followed what the guide said
The police decided murder was preferable to a beating, for jumping a subway turnstile
https://youtu.be/uj0mtxXEGE8?t=50